Design Club
Design Club consists of both Design Club Live, which consists of livestreams of games for commentary on the design aspects of those games, and also answers to game design questions asked in the chat, and also a series of videos analysing specific parts of different video games. Its pretty cool. Its by Dan Emmons aka Other Dan. The Series of Youtube Videos The series of youtube videos start with one on the first level of the original mario game. The youtube video episodes of Design Club are available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CH8BA8XcqReieXLFf4afI0 The videos so far are: Super Mario Bros: Level 1-1 - How Super Mario Mastered Level Design. League of Legends: Summoner's Rift - Level Design Analysis Portal: Test Chambers - Tutorial Mechanics Mark of the Ninja - Stealth Games and Visual Clues The Blue Shell - Why Mario Kart's Most Hated Item Exists Design Club Live Design Club Live is done in a less pre-planned manner than the youtube videos, and as a result, has many more streams than there are videos. Recording of the streams can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/extracredits/profile/past_broadcasts along with Allison's Art Corner. BEGIN PROJECT OF TRANSCRIBING STREAMS. QUESTION: DO OLD STREAMS GET DELETED FROM THE PAST STREAMS LIST? I DON"T KNOW. Transcripts Pokemon Red Transcript of http://www.twitch.tv/extracredits/b/581462790 Pokemon Red version : Speaking starts at 3:28 "How's everybody doing today? It's a day in time October 24th 2014, and, I am having trouble setting, hold on, There we go. One sec. Oh G*d. Everything's terrible. Heres the cam. ... alright, good enough. How's everybody doing today? Propies with the gunsmoke solute. How's it going? Welcome to the stream everybody. Illgaris says T The wizerman, the wizeman is doing awesome. I love to hear it. Its 8 where your at? Its 5 where I'm at. You're a whole country apart, and thats ok. We're still connected by game design and thats awesome. So guys, I was wonder what game I should do today, and I wanted to play sonic, because somebody suggested it earlier, and I thought "Hey! Sonic's a good one, and theres a lot of cool things to talk about with sonic", but I couldn't get it working. And when I tried to buy points on the Wii system, aaand, so I could actually just, play it on the watchimacallit, on the virtual console, and they wouldn't let me buy wii points. So, Scr*w 'em I say. Mohii showing everyone up at 3 am. Water, water, everone has ... water ... battery acid, whatever drink they want to do. Also, just so we're all on the same page, don't drink battery acid. I said that like once, and its a thing. ...really weird. Uh, so, Oh G*d, Camera's unfocusing. So, uhh, I ... game that I had played before, and, well I mean I played sonic before but ... autotookie ... less hours here to prepare it, and I decided to audible to Pokemon, ...s game is super awesome, aand, that also had problems, but I managed to get it working. So! <5:29 on the video> Let's talk design of Pokemon. Um. 95,96,98 Game Freak Inc. This game came out orignally for the Game Boy, uhh, I'm sure all of you guys have at the very least heard of it, if you haven't played the originals. I would be very surprised if there are not large percentages of people who have played it. This game is ubiquitous. This game caused the/an entire eruption (at least in the US, where I'm from) and this game ... this game was in-sane. This game took over. It was like, a /huge/ video game franchise, it was the biggest, it was a huge show, it was a huge card game, it was a huge eeeverything. It is, one of the, most recognizable game franchises in the world. And, looking back on a game like that, you have to, as a game designer, whenever you see a game that is /this/ successful, you have to stop and wonder like "okay, this is super awesome, right", I'm actually gonna, while I do this, I'm going to turn up the sound, I'm going to turn off my speakers. And I'm going to need you guys to help me out just if its too loud or too soft, ok. So I'm actually gonna, my assumption is that its too loud so I'm gonna put it down here, but let me know if it is too loud for you guys. <6:58> Thats ok Bartimey, its one of those things that you should probably play. .. Any time you are, if you are a game designer, you really owe it to yourself to play all of the big releases at the very very least, Um, because it is just, so important to be able to communicate with other, um, other devs, Now its muted? Ok, so, it probably muted, lets see how it goes. Um, the reason I picked Red, is because this is the version I had growing up. But getting back to the early point is very important that the , that just playing those new releases is, its very important because what ends up happening, is you get into conversations with other game devs, and you need, uh, have touchpoints. You can say "I'm going to talk to you about this concept, and the only thing that we have is, uh, the games that we share, have played." Yeah, thats fair Barti I don't blame you at all, its one of those things that, if you're gonna make a career out of game design, its worth playing a lot of the big ones, just because, just to have it, but if your not commited to it, I don't blame you. that is quieter, now its muted, yes. theres a lot of, yes it means when it pauses. We're running this thing on an emulator. But, again, Pokemon, Super super big franchise, media empire, its just, the game is insane, right, like <8:42> like, how well this game did, comparatively, just over time, is insane. like, right, I could, very easily argue that more people know about pokemon than know about mario, which is an insane statement to make. So, I wanna just get into the game and I'm going to start talking about it, because a lot of it I think comes from the mechanics of the game, and, even getting into it, theres a lot of things I could point out about it, even the first like, you know, the first few, like the first hour or so of this game, um, there are a couple of mistakes that just like, seem really bad? but are just like "Wow, how did this game get so popular?" and, its, its worth taking a look at the systemic underpinnings of the entire thing, because when you start to ask yourself why a game is popular, like, when you ask yourself ... "how do I make a game that people will like?" and you stary drawing on all of your knowledge, you have very few um, , you have very few touchpoints of things were you can say "ok, this is in the genre of game I'm trying to make, and its doing really well, how do I try to get there?" so, when you're in that space, a game like Pokemon that just goes gangbusters, right, <8:21> it just does gangbusters across multiple forms of media, its one of those things that is just very important ... grasp, and I think it's very telling that this game way back in Gameboy color days is still purchased like by people my age that from now like, from in the past like, I played this game on gameboy, pokemon, I did not get black and white 2, I got black and white, and I didn't get x any y, but I bought every pokemon up through there. because its just such a big part of who I was growing up, right? ... I'm interested to see if will be, I don't, it's definitely not going to be as big for the kids growing up, but I am interested to see the demographics of of the people who are playing pokemon now. Because, my, my assumption is that is skews older, it definitely skews older than it used to, because all those people are growing up. <11:36> "So, this is my grandson. He's been your rival since you were a baby. " So the, the setup here is that its getting you a very easy to understand relationship, right. It's like "What is your name?" They're putting you in the game, and asking you for , saying "Hey, this is you, they're going to do something awesome." Can the chat choose the rival's name? uhh, I will let the chat choose the Pokemon names. "Pokemon is what forced my mom to teach me to read"? Thats awesome. "You're very own Pokemon legend is about to unfold" <12:17>So, lets go over quickly what we just did, right: The first action we took in this game was to name ourselves and put ourselves in this world, and to name our opponent, and put our opponent in this world, right? So, its, asking us to buy into the world on a level that a lot of games of this era um, don't. Mostly just RPGs. RPGs usually give you the name, actually I'm not sure, the first interaction you have with Zelda for example, they ask you to put in your name, that just titles the save file, and its not actually used in the game? "A world of dreams and adventures awaits. Lets go." So we take this picture that we've acquired of us and we shrink it down so we know who we are, and then we get to explore, right so we get to talk to mom, this is just something "All boys leave home someday. It said so on TV.